Homeless Deaths in S.F. Are at Record High / Weather, drug abuse, shortage of rooms are possible factors

Sabin Russell, Chronicle Staff Writer

Published
4:00 am PST, Wednesday, December 16, 1998

1998-12-16 04:00:00 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- A record-high 157 destitute San Franciscans perished during the past twelve months, according to the city's grim annual tally of homeless deaths.

Serving as a yearly barometer of despair, the Homeless Death Review, which was presented to city health commissioners yesterday, lays out in stark statistical detail the brutal reality of life on the streets.

The average age of the homeless people who died in the city this year was 42.

Drug overdoses accounted for 62 deaths. There were seven suicides. Four of the homeless died of severe infections.

One hundred thirty-four of the homeless dead were male, 22 female. One was listed as transgender.

"We should be concerned with every death in our community," said Barbara Garcia, director of community substance abuse programs.

The death count is substantially higher than the 104 reported at the same time last year, and just above the 154 dead counted in 1996.

El Nino's endless winter rains, the sweep of homeless from Golden Gate Park, a serious shortage of single hotel rooms for the poor, and a more potent form of heroin -- all might have contributed to the increase.

However, in part because the annual survey is not a scientific study, public health experts could not pinpoint the causes.

The report is merely a body count, drawn from medical examiner records of December 1997 through November 1998. The report presents no evidence and draws no conclusions why the numbers have fluctuated so widely in recent years.

"My own feeling," said Marian Pena, director of homeless programs for the health department, "is that things are more desperate for people."

Estimates of the hard-to-count homeless population vary widely, from 2,000 to 3,000 living on the streets to 8,000 to 16,000 periodically housed.

The city started a project last year to try to bring the death count down -- a Death Prevention Program. But the three health-care workers, the social worker and the nurse that were assigned to the program could not do the trick this year, if they ever had a prayer of doing so.

Although the wretched El Nino of last winter may have made life miserable for the homeless, there were only 16 more deaths in the rainy season than during the second, drier half of 1998.

City records, in fact, showed a drop in emergency room visits during the El Nino winter. Homeless program director Pena said this could be the result of attempts to bring medical services directly to communities with large homeless populations.

Heroin alone accounted for 40 homeless deaths this year -- but San Francisco has had triple the average state death rate from illicit drugs for many years.

San Francisco's tally of homeless deaths is the outgrowth of a project begun in 1985 by the Tenderloin Times, a neighborhood weekly newspaper that went out of business four years ago. City health officials took over the project after the paper's demise, gathering statistics from the medical examiner's office.

Of the 157 homeless deaths, 36 were in the Tenderloin -- double the number last year. Sixty-three percent of the deaths were in the Tenderloin, Inner Mission and South of Market areas, which are among the poorest parts of the city.

Fewer than half of the homeless deaths were outdoors. People qualify as homeless under federal guidelines if they have had no permanent address for a year and have been living with a roof over their heads for no more than 28 days.

Indoors or out, the details are not pleasant. "Joe's skeletal remains were found by gardeners at Golden Gate Park inside a sleeping bag that was inside a pup tent," is one example cited in the report. "Joe was 42 years old when he died."

Another victim highlighted in the report is "Sally," age 27, who was discharged from San Francisco General Hospital to a single-room occupancy hotel. "She was found dead in the breezeway, where she collapsed on her way to the hall bathroom."

Randy Shaw, director of the Tenderloin Housing Clinic, said the rising prosperity of the Bay Area has both dampened public interest in the poor at the same time that the housing shortage -- the heart of homelessness-- has become more severe.

"There has never been a scarcer supply of rooms in the history of San Francisco," said Shaw, whose nonprofit group operates programs to house the homeless. "We used to have over 1,200 units of single hotel rooms available for general assistance. Now it's gone below 800."

Shaw said that hundreds of units have disappeared in the past three years because of fires. Illegal conversions to tourist hotel rooms have also taken a toll.

"I have people willing to spend 80 percent of their general assistence income on housing," he said. "That's $310, leaving only $45 for food, and I can't get them a room."

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A memorial service for the homeless people who died this year will be held at 5:30 p.m., on Monday, December 21, at Civic Center Plaza.